I have finally got the rotary working! I still have more to learn, but parts of the engraving skip a line on the same area of the text. If you look close enough its the C on the red tumbler and the S on the orange tumbler.
Is this from a slip or something else causing it?
What does your preview look like? Also include your lightburn file.
Are you on roller or chuck type rotary?
What are your settings for rotary setup and for the engrave? Speed? Acceleration?
Does that still happen if you shrink the graphic by 20%?
There is a mismatch in the settings, somewhere.
For my setup (5 w and 10w diode), I had to change the direction of the engrave to 90 degrees to get satisfied with the results. On some files and some tumblers, i still get a partially dropped line. Show us what you are working with and we will try to help you.
I am using a 4 wheel rotary, so under rotary settings I have it as roller. I have my steps per rotation pretty accurate, and all of my sizing is exactly how it should be.
I haven’t shrunk the graphic to see if it will do better, but I did a small tumbler the same way and it worked perfectly fine. Not one issue on the engraving. My design in comparison didnt wrap quiet as much so I assume it has something to do with the turning of the rotary.
Speed = 300
Power Max = 47
Power Min = 45
Interval = .05
I thought maybe slowing it down and doing a lower power may also help.
As far as other speeds, I did change two of them in the machine settings based on a video I saw. I changed Idle Speed from 300 to 20, and I changed Line Shift Speed from 100 to 20. I don’t know enough about acceleration or any of the settings to just go in and change them lol.
Also to give a little more insight, my “boundaries” or box size is based on tumbler diameter and engrave space. In this case my tumbler diameter is 3.96" for height of box and width of box is 3.85" to make sure I don’t go down too far on the tumbler.
I set Start From as Current Position and Job Origin is Center Right. Those were also suggestions from a video I saw.
I did a preview and everything looked good, but I honestly didn’t zoom in to check everything completely.
What is your interval set to (lines per inch)? If the error is persistent across different speeds, then I assume you have an issue with the line spacing
For giggles, try the same graphic with the same settings at a 90 degree angle, see if there is still a line in the output.
My Line Interval(mm) was .05
I will try another tumbler soon, and test it with the scan angle at 90 degrees with the same tumbler and design. I will let you know!
Do you need 4 passes over the same area? The normal spot size of a 50.8mm (2") lens is just over 0.20mm on most machines. If your interval is 0.05mm then you will cover the 0.20mm beam or spot size in 4 passes. Is this what you want to do?
Is there only one occurrence of the issue on each job?
Suggest as a start
Sometimes you can get an interval that doesn’t work out right for the stepper motor… it doesn’t step then it steps too far. This has to do with rounding or just going from a floating point number to something fixed and digital.
In the machine settings you can slow down the jump off speed (how fast it starts turning) and the acceleration. It doesn’t look like you have a grip problem from what I can see.
I have a file specifically for the wheeled rotaries that has all my rotary settings that I load when I do mugs.
I don’t know if they will buy you much, as it appears it’s a machien issue, not an artwork issue.
This will make your Y axes the scanning axes, which may not be the most pleasant operation of your machine…
Good luck
I understand the issues with going against the norm for scan angle - however, on my diode machine it is the only way to achieve clean engraves. Otherwise, I end up with groves in the metal. I presume it has to do with a rectangle shaped beam. I would like the new user to explore the options, even if it is not 100% the best option for some machines - it may work out better for him, as it does for me.
Didn’t say don’t do it, just it’s hard on the machine. On my fiber it gives you a warning if you attempt this.
If it doesn’t show up in the preview or artwork, it appears to be a mechanical or interval setting.
Usually if it’s slipping, there is more than a single flaw, but about anything is possible.
So I am still learning all of this stuff with lightburn. I went smaller on the interval part just because I have the smaller lettering. I usually get better results on smaller lettering when I go to a smaller interval. So that is my reasoning on doing the .05mm
